connielane, posts by tag: fandom - LiveJournal

- I am so excited about f_march_madness I can hardly stand it! There are FOURTEEN female characters in the Sweet Sixteen, and SO MANY of them are characters I love! Hermione Granger! Veronica Mars! Donna Noble (SO ridiculously excited she's representing Who)! Sansa Stark! Zoe Washburne! CJ Cregg! MARY CRAWLEY! (I'm quite surprised Violet didn't win the prelim poll and end up representing Downton, but I can't say I'm not delighted to see Mary in there and still fighting.) The stanning is so much fun, and LOL that no one is stanning for Hermione, because she doesn't need it. Really excited Sansa has gotten as far as she has, and DUDES - did you Game of Thrones fans realize that Michelle Fairley (Catelyn Stark) played Hermione's mum in DH1?

- I'm trying to watch Angel now that Mark Watches is doing that, along with Buffy. Maybe it takes a while to get into, but I'm not enjoying Angel nearly as much as Buffy. I'm stuck on an episode right now that I stopped watching shortly after Cordelia used the word "retard." It's hard to believe that was acceptable, even as far back as 1999 (which isn't even THAT far back). I'm sure it's probably a writing anomaly, but it immediately sucked my interest in continuing the episode, and the completionist in me doesn't want to skip it. Conundrum!

I've been watching so much television the last couple of months that my movie-watching is slumping, but I'm starting to get back into the swing of things. For example...

- I saw and really loved John Carter this weekend. And I can't stand how the critics have piled on it and the media is focusing so much on it's financial "failure." I liked it more than I liked Avatar, and I actually feel it's a better film. And films like those don't do most of their business on opening weekend. I'm afraid, though, that the competition in the coming weeks may prove too much to overcome.

- Had a semi-marathon of Biological Freakiness movies this weekend, starting with Eyes Without a Face. I double-featured it with The Manster (and geeked out that those two films played as a double-feature with EWAF was originally released in the US), then followed those with The War of the Gargantuas (thank you, Brad Pitt, for bringing it to my attention) and Basket Case. I liked The Manster very much, and it's a more entertaining version of much sillier movies with the same man-with-two-heads concept. War of the Gargantuas has lots of awesome visuals and is beautifully shot for the campy B-movie it is. (Also, the "Words Get Stuck In My Throat" musical number is hilariously bad.) And I've been meaning to see Basket Case for years. It's a B- or C-level slasher, but you can't help but admire what they were able to accomplish with such a small budget. And yes, the creature effect is cheesy as heck, but I love it. I'll take cheesy and creative gore over boring and too-perfect CGI gore any day of the week. I love being able to look at something and see that someone's hands made it.

- I also saw Friends With Kids, which I ADORED and which I'd actually rather devote a whole post to, so I'll stop right here.

- Also deserving of its own post was my trip to Brooklyn and the charming Nitehawk Cinema to see Point Break. It's kind of amazing what a bad cop Keanu Reeves is in this movie. And I can't see it now without thinking of Hot Fuzz.

* I still never type "nonsense" without expressing feigned shock at my own profanity. Thank you, FAP Debate Thread!

* Been watching Game of Thrones on HBO and started a separate post about it, but I'll just do the short version here instead. I'm enjoying it, but it feels a bit empty. I think it's Exhibit A in my argument that being more faithful to the source material doesn't always make for a better adaptation. Not that I think it's a *bad* adaptation, by any means. It just feels like an abbreviated transcript of the book. With more boobs. :P

* For the first time in my fandom life, I'm participating in f_march_madness. Tough decisions! Awesome GIFs! I think I might be doing it wrong, as there seems to be a tradition of selling votes or something. If I'm not familiar with a show, I'm just voting for an actor I like or, at worst, the person whose name is the coolest. Also, the comments remind me why I generally hate fandom. :P Seeing tons of people raging against Sherlock Holmes and the Eleventh Doctor is kind of hilarious and weird. And there's a slightly disturbing "men are evil" vibe there. Pssht, kids. I do, however, love that Donna Noble has a comfortable lead among the Doctor Who characters. That may change, but it's nice to see that people remember how awesome she was.

* In a strange turn of events, Dan Radcliffe and Bonnie Wright are both up for Empire Awards (no Rupert or Emma). He's up for Best Actor and she's up for Best Female Newcomer (she's a newcomer after being in all 8 HP films?).

* I paid my second visit to the Nitehawk cinema this past weekend. They're going "Crazy for Swayze" all month and I took the opportunity to see Dirty Dancing on the big screen for the first time (seen it on video countless times, never in a theater). They had a pre-show (getting more like the Alamo all the time) and played a lot of 1980s videos, including the McDonald's dance number from Mac and Me. I took great pleasure in telling my neighbor that yes, in fact, that was a movie and not some elaborate commercial. I had the waffles and fried chicken - chicken good, waffles eh. The Today show did a segment on this theater last week, but I wish they'd said more about the programming instead of concentrating solely on "OMG real food at a movie theater - what will they think of next?!" I also had to laugh at their sample price for dinner/movie for two, which was $100. I guess some people might spend that much if they got a couple of cocktails, but my solo movie/brunch came to much less than half that. I am going to spending a lot more time at this theater in the coming weeks. It's no Drafthouse, but it's still very cool.

Oh, and here's one of my favorite things about it. The Wall of VHS:


There's way more to it, but I wanted to get close enough to discern titles.

I just spent 15 minutes dying over a GIF. It started as a response to the age old (or at least it seems that old) Twilight vs. HP question on ONTD (source). And then I started thinking about the history of lawnmowers in the fandom.

And then I died.

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I almost hate to spam LJ with something so silly, but it seemed a waste to Tweet it.

Yes, I'm still doing this! :P

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I read the first couple of chapters of "Mark Reads Harry Potter" while on vacation, and while it was immensely funny (Harry's communion with the closet spiders, FTW), I wasn't exactly hooked, and this looked like a fandom thing that was just going to pass me by.

But, more as a way to kill time while waiting for something to come on television last night, I started back up where I left off at Chapter Four. The next thing I knew it was nearly 1AM and I was NOT ABOUT TO STOP because he had just started POA and sleep seemed SO unimportant compared with watching his brain asplode when he got to the end.

I was determined to catch up before he got to the "huge thing that happens in terms of plot" at the end of GOF (which, I think the end of canon has finally proved, is NOT Hermione kissing Harry on the cheek). And I'm happy to report that I now HAVE caught up, and am fully excited to see how he responds to the rest.

If you are not reading this already, you should be. Warning: with so much to catch up on, pace yourself, because those posts will EAT YOUR LIFE and if you have a day off you may burn through the entire thing in one sitting. I seriously burned through all but those first few chapters in two very long sittings. This guy is the blankest slate for the books you could imagine. He literally does not know what is coming (though he does have some context-free knowledge about PAGE 606 TRUFAX), and his increasing love for the story and identification with the characters (and wishes for the jerks to "die in all the fires") is DELICIOUS. It is absolutely thrilling to watch his progress through the books.

This is like that guy who was watching the final season of Lost without any knowledge of what came before, but EVEN BETTER because he starts from the beginning and it's like you're reading the books for the first time! Only you know what's coming! Only you feel like you don't!

I was in the Smoky Mountains with 30 of my friends, reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  I kind of wish that the group-read had become a tradition before HBP, because there really is nothing like experiencing new canon with other people.  With different people reading at different speeds, you get these periodic outbursts of emotion - laughter, surprise, squees, cries, and outright sobs.  About this time, I was at the chapter where the Trio find themselves back at Hogwarts, and I was shocked to discover that the guy pictured in the chapter art for Ch. 25 was NEVILLE.  (Who else glazed over it, thinking it was Mad-Eye Moody?)  I could tell when my fellow readers were getting to the end, because there was always a point where you'd hear something like "Oh my God!", followed by intermittent and seemingly inconsolable sobs.  I did a bit of that myself, and I remember quite well stepping out on the balcony, mostly out of earshot, and bawling my heart out at 'The Forest Again.'

I miss that feeling of anticipation, and it's been a strange year not having any of that, and having precious little to keep my attention on HP - that was directed at YOU, WB ... WHEN will you end our long, global nightmare and release a trailer for HBP, huh?!!  I've drifted away from fandom, as I suppose the rest of you have, and there are days when I don't think about HP at all.  But it still claims a lot of my affection, and sometimes it comes to mind because of the smallest things.  For example ... I don't know if I've shared with you that I can't. Freaking. Stop. listening to "In the Heights."  It's seriously become my NY soundtrack.  One of the songs uses the words "sexual tension," and for SOME reason, those two words are inextricably connected with my experience of the Harry Potter fandom. :P

Anyway, just wanted to take a moment to say Happy Anniversary.  Hopefully (*looks pointedly at WB once more*) there will be much to get excited about in the Potterdom in the coming months.

Joss Whedon - Created Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which lasted for seven seasons. Seventh season was not well received by the fans, but it didn't exactly kill affection for the show as a whole. Four years later: Whedon starts writing Buffy stories again. No one (that I can find) says anything to the effect that Whedon should just let it go and not mess with the fans' precious Buffyverse more than he already has.

Spielberg and Lucas - Made Raiders of the Lost Ark, an extremely popular film that spawned two very popular (though widely acknowledged as inferior) sequels. Nineteen years later: Speilberg and Lucas make another Indy film. Fans don't complain about this, except that they want it to be a worthy addition to the franchise. No one says "Ugh, not ANOTHER Indy story!"

Fans had their complaints about the Star Wars prequels, as everyone knows, but I never heard anyone complaining that there were going to BE prequels.

Did Tolkien fans complain when The Silmarillion came out because they didn't want new stories from Middle Earth?

Then WHY do so-called Harry Potter fans complain when there's apparently new canon to be enjoyed very shortly? I mean ... I think we all know why that is. But it's just amusing to me that the whiners don't seem to realize how ridiculous they sound complaining that there's going to be another story to enjoy.

Of course, I could be totally wrong about complaints in those other fandoms, not being as involved in them as I have been in HP, but it strikes me as a bizarre fannish anomaly nonetheless.

I was going to post this filtered, but yanno? It's 29 days to new canon and I don't care.

In my time in the Harry Potter fandom, I've read more pseudo-intellectual pompous bulls**t about these CHILDREN'S BOOKS than I care to recall. I just read a post this morning that promised to tell me all about how the HP movies (the MOVIES) indicate the lack of a future for Harry and Ginny in the final book. I expected at least some detailed analysis, but it was just a tease. An excuse to show people how smart the person who posted it is, and that said poster has a library card and isn't afraid to use it.

This isn't the first time I've endured this kind of tripe. I used to find this kind of thing entertaining, but the closer we get to having all the facts, the more it's just an irritant.

It's times like this when I *WISH* life worked like it does in Annie Hall...



Dangit! Why CAN'T we pull JKR out from nowhere?! *cries*

Work
Well, I've effectively (if not efficiently) shipped off my boss, 8 adult counselors, and 40 campers (grades 4-8) to sports camp for the week. Every year it's always hairy and I always forget something that makes things more complicated, but I think it went well. So I'm kind of on my own this week, which is both good and not-so-good.

Movies
I saw both Nacho Libre and Cars this weekend. There are some great things about Nacho Libre - most notably the ever hilarious Jack Black - but something about it just seemed ... off. Maybe it was the audience I saw it with, but many of the things that I could tell were supposed to be funny just fell flat. It was a cute story, though, and it was worth the price of admission to see Jack Black freestyle a love tribute to the hot nun Incarnacion.

cargill was spot on when he said that Cars was a ripoff of Doc Hollywood. I'd like to think that I would have made that connection even without hearing him say that. Hotshot doctor (or in this case, a race car) is on his way to California to "make it big." He gets waylaid in a small town where he has to work off some kind of property damage before he can leave. During the several days he is there he interacts with the town's inhabitants who are annoying at first but eventually grow on him. And there is a lawyer-type female who could (or could have) made it in the big city but chose to stay behind, presumably so that she can meet the hero, change his life, and make him fall for her.

Yeah, the story is forumlaic, but the magic comes from the concept. I love the way Pixar takes an idea and a world as far as it can possibly go through every detail. This is a world where cars are in the place of humans (and animals - tractors=cows, and there are even car bugs). It's also a little snapshot of Nascar culture, and while it doesn't really play exclusively for those people, that's where a lot of the humor comes from.

Oh! And if you see it, stay for the credits and check out the Pixar car parodies with lots of voice cameos. Too cute.

Fandom
I'm slowly but surely getting through the mina_de_malfois story. I'm not sure why, but it's just not captivating me the way it is the rest of my flist. It kind of reminds me of the Olympics two years ago. Maybe I just came too late to the party. Or maybe it's just me being solipsistic. :P That's certainly nothing new.

And of course there's charlottelennox. Reading the comments on Bad Penny and trying to keep up with everyone who is talking about it has sucked up my entire weekend. I really have nothing to say about it right now that hasn't already been said, though. And I have no intention of confronting anyone about anything. The guilty parties clearly know that things are being said, and if they can't be bothered to answer the allegations, they're the ones who end up looking like asses. Plus, none of the people involved know who the hell I am anyway. ;)

It's an interesting time in the fandom, and things are shifting in unexpected (mostly pleasant) ways. I was just getting into the fandom when all of the constantine stuff was going down, so I'm not as invested as other people are, but I'm glad the GT people are finally having their day. They were the first fansite I joined and people there were always nice to me.

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Hee! When I put my real name in it gives me Rick's "Of all the gin joints..." line from Casablanca.

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